Quotes About Refinement

Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man's features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them.

Increased means and increased leisure are the two civilizers of man.

A man who is careful with his palate is not likely to be careless with his paragraphs.

Of course he despised the world as a whole; every thoughtful man should; it is almost a test of refinement.

As refined fare serves a hungry man as well as and no better than coarser food, the more pretentious artist will not dream of inviting the hungry man to his meal.

You've got many refinements. I don't think you need to worry about your failure at long division. I mean, after all, you got through short division, and short division is all that a lady ought to be called on to cope with.

Purge. Prepare. Perfect.

To that class we may leave it to refine the vernacular dialects of the country, to enrich those dialects with terms of science borrowed from the Western nomenclature, and to render them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass of the population.

Adversity is the diamond dust Heaven polishes its jewels with

Quoted by Thomas Carlyle) The rude man requires only to see something going on. The man of more refinement must be made to feel. The man of complete refinement must be made to reflect.

I'm always looking for new ways to improve my skills.

In the big factory of perfecting human souls, the Earth was a kind of tumbler. The same as the kind people use to polish rocks. All souls come here to rub the sharp edges off each other. All of us, we're meant to be worn smooth by conflict and pain of every kind. To be polished. There was nothing bad about this. This wasn't suffering, it was erosion.It was just another, a basic, an important step in the refining process.

Consider that the earth is a processing plant, a factory. Picture a tumbler used to polish rocks: a rolling drum filled with water and sand. Consider that your soul is dropped in as an ugly rock, some raw mineral or natural resource, crude oil, mineral ore. And all conflict and pain is the abrasive that rubs us, polishes our soul, refines us, teaches and finishes us over lifetime after lifetime.

Consider that your soul is dropped in as an ugly rock, some raw material or a natural resource, crude oil, mineral ore. And all conflict and pain is just the abrasive that rubs us, polishes our souls, refines us, teaches and finishes us over lifetime after lifetime.

Picture a tumbler used to polish rocks: A rolling drum filled with water and sand. Consider that your soul is dropped in as an ugly rock, some raw material or a natural resource, crude oil, mineral ore. And all conflict and pain is just the abrasive that rubs us, polishes our souls, refines us

Their perfect English accents. As if serving all their vowels on a fine set of tongs.

the cardinal labor of composition, which is excision…

And her old Uncle William used to say a lady is known by her shoes and her gloves.

Bond Street fascinated her; Bond Street early in the morning in the season; its flags flying; its shops; no splash; no glitter; one roll of tweed in the shop where her father had bought his suits for fifty years; a few pearls; salmon on an iceblock.

Bond Street la fascinaba; Bond Street muy de mañana en plena temporada; sus banderas ondeando; sus tiendas; sin excesos; sin resplandor; un rollo de tweed en la tienda donde su padre se había comprado los trajes durante cincuenta años; unas cuantas perlas; el salmón encima de un taco de hielo.

If someday I make a dictionary of definitions wanting single words to head them, a cherished entry will be To abridge, expand, or otherwise alter or cause to be altered for the sake of belated improvement, one's own writings in translation.

There just aren't enough o's in the word smooth for me, are there?

Many of our senators and congressmen seem to base their title to public favor upon their uncouth manners and lack of refinement, upon the fact that they have discarded socks or once wore blue-jeans.

The truly fashionable are beyond fashion.